A Transfer Learning-based Framework for Enhanced Classification of Perceived Mental Stress using EEG Spectrograms

Stress is a significant health concern, impacting both physical and mental well-being. Prolonged exposure to stress can lead to numerous physical health issues, including cardiovascular diseases, and a weakened immune system. This study presents a novel methodology for classifying perceived mental stress using electroencephalography (EEG) signals. By utilizing the publicly available Leipzig Study for Mind-Body-Emotion Interactions dataset, we analyze EEG data collected from 53 participants over a 7-minute resting-state duration. Our approach involves transforming EEG signals into spectrograms using the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT), resulting in a time-frequency representation of the input signals.We employ transfer learning to fine-tune three pre-trained deep neural networks i.e., ResNet50, EfficientNetB0, and DenseNet121 for classifying stress into two and three levels. Our findings demonstrate that the ResNet50 model achieves superior classification accuracies of 95.80% and 86.02% for two and three-level stress classification, respectively, outperforming existing state-of-the-art methods. This study is the first to utilize STFT-generated spectrograms and transfer learning for perceived stress classification, highlighting the efficacy of deep learning techniques in quantifying perceived mental stress through non-invasive EEG recordings. Our results indicate that the proposed method can significantly enhance the accuracy of stress classification frameworks, offering potential improvements in mental health assessment and intervention strategies.